2026/01/25 by Bry Willis · 1 voice
Computer Science · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · #Chaos, Complexity, and Education #Embodied and Extended Cognition #Quantum Mechanics and Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.5281/zenodo.18364182
openalex publication_date 2026/01/25 · openalex created_date 2026/01/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper offers a deflationary diagnosis of several persistent philosophical puzzles associated with quantum mechanics, arguing that their apparent strangeness arises not from exotic features of physical reality but from the uncritical extension of a developmentally acquired cognitive heuristic: object permanence. Object permanence—learned early in infancy—functions as an adaptive compression strategy that enables agents to track, reidentify, and coordinate with stable features of their environment under ordinary conditions. Its reliability, however, is ecologically local rather than universal. The paper argues that when this heuristic is tacitly elevated from a context-bound cognitive achievement into a metaphysical default, it generates systematic category errors when applied outside its domain of validity. Quantum mechanics is treated as a controlled stress test for this heuristic. Recent matter-wave interference experiments with increasingly massive systems demonstrate that object-based expectations fail quantifiably under engineered conditions that suppress environmental decoherence. The resulting phenomena—superposition, nonlocal correlations, and related interpretive pressures—are shown to be less ontological scandals than symptoms of grammatical overreach: the persistence of object-based descriptive demands in regimes where their ecological licensing no longer obtains. The paper further examines the cultural afterlife of Schrödinger’s cat as a case in which a reductio argument metastasised into an explanatory metaphor, and briefly situates the Everett (Many-Worlds) interpretation as a strategy for preserving object-based reidentification under quantum formalism. Throughout, the argument remains diagnostic rather than revisionary. No claims are advanced concerning the correctness of quantum mechanics, the resolution of the measurement problem, or the superiority of any interpretation. The contribution is methodological and metaphilosophical in intent. It reframes quantum “pseudoproblems” as artefacts of heuristic inheritance and grammatical sedimentation, advocating a posture of heuristic humility: recognising when cognitively indispensable tools have reached the limits of their jurisdiction.